British teenager who killed 3 girls in Southport stabbing to be sentenced today

The sentencing of the teenager who killed three teenage girls and injured 10 other people last summer in a knife attack at a dance class in Southport, England, began Thursday.

Judge Julian Goose, who is presiding over the case, told the attacker, Axel Rudakubana, 18, that a life sentence would be inevitable after he pleaded guilty on Monday.

Mr. Rudakubana appeared at Liverpool Crown Court wearing a gray sweatsuit, with a blue medical mask covering his mouth and nose. He initially refused to speak and put his head in his lap, but when prosecutors began to read out the details of the case, Mr. Rudakubana: “I need to talk to a paramedic because I feel sick.”

The judge noted that doctors had examined Mr. Rudakubana that morning and determined that he was fit to attend the hearing. He continued to shout for several minutes.

Judge Goose said, “These cases are conducted under my control, not yours, Mr. Rudakubana. Do you understand?” He then ordered Mr. Rudakubana removed from the court, saying: “I don’t want him to disturb.”

Prosecutors continued to read out the details of their case against him, revealing the chilling nature of the July 29 attack. Deanna Heer, a lawyer for the prosecution, said he “targeted the youngest, most vulnerable to spread the greatest level of fear and outrage, which he succeeded in doing.”

She told the courtroom that while Mr. Rudakubana was arrested at the police station after the attack, he was heard saying: “It’s good those children are dead” and “I’m so happy.”

Mrs Heer told how he had traveled by taxi to Hart Space, where a sold-out Taylor Swift-themed dance class for children aged six to 11 was running during the summer holidays from school.

Visual evidence shown in court, taken from CCTV footage and police body cameras, showed Mr. Rudakubana arrived outside the dance studio, which was filled with 26 children.

He entered the building and rammed through the room, stabbing several children as well as Leanne Lucas, who had organized the class. Moments later, screams could be heard on outdoor CCTV footage before children started running from the building.

Some were covered in blood and collapsed before bystanders helped them.

Several people cried in the courtroom when the footage was shown, and several chose to leave, overcome with emotion.

The injuries to Bebe King, 6, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, were so severe that they died inside the building, police said. Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, ran outside with the other children but quickly collapsed. She was taken to hospital and died the following day. Eight other children and two adults were injured in the attack.

But amidst the horror, there was also heroism. The court heard how, after Ms Lucas was stabbed in the back, she still managed to lead the children out the door and urge them to run for safety, even though she was bleeding from a serious wound.

Another teacher at the dance studio at the time of the attack, Heidi Liddle, also urged children to flee before a girl ran for the bathroom. Mrs. Liddle followed her in, locked the door, and braced her foot against it to protect them. She told the girl not to make a sound. The police later rescued them.

Two window cleaners working nearby, Marcin Tyjon and Joel Verite, heard the commotion and rushed to the scene. Mr. Verite followed the police into the building, picked up Bebe and carried her out of the building, screaming as he did so due to the severity of her injuries. Mr. Tyjon gave Alice CPR in a parking lot outside.

Mrs Lucas said in a statement read out in court that her injuries had affected her physically and mentally.

“I, like the girls, have scars that we can’t see, scars that we can’t move on from,” she said, adding, “To find that he had always set out to hurt the vulnerable is unfathomable.”

Since Mr. Rudakubana pleaded guilty, a portrait of a deeply troubled young man obsessed with violence has emerged, as has the fact that he was on the radar of local authorities for years before the attack in Southport, a town north of Liverpool.

Following the attack, a series of anti-immigrant riots broke out in Britain after disinformation about the perpetrator’s identity swirled on social media and messaging apps. False claims that he was an undocumented immigrant or newly arrived asylum seeker were reinforced by far-right agitators. Mr. Rudakubana is a British citizen who was born in Wales to parents originally from Rwanda.

At the ages of 13 and 14, he was referred three times to Prevent, a British counter-terrorism programme, due to his focus on violence, but these referrals were ultimately dropped because each time it was determined that he did not meet the threshold for intervention .

There was no evidence that he ascribed to any particular political or religious ideology, police and prosecutors said. Content found on Mr. Rudakubana’s computer and tablets showed a long-standing fascination with violence, killing and genocide.

The material included a history of Nazi Germany, reports on violence in modern Sri Lanka, documents on war in Chechnya, a book on clan cleansing in Somalia, academic reports on the Rwandan genocide and a paper on punishments used on enslaved people on 18th century British plantations.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Tuesday that the attack was a sign that terrorism in the country was developing and that young people were being radicalized by “a tidal wave of violence that is freely available online.”

Mr. Rudakubana was also convicted of a weapons charge for possessing the knife used in the attack, for producing a biological toxin and for “possessing information” described as “of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism,” after investigators found ricin, a deadly toxin, and a PDF file titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al Qaeda Training Manual” in his home.

The judge will not be able to sentence him to life in prison without parole because he was 17 at the time of the assault.

The case has raised questions about how authorities may have missed opportunities to stop the violence before it began. The government has said it will conduct a public inquiry into the matter to better understand what happened and what needs to change. But the case has also highlighted the issue of young people fixated on extreme violence accessing online images and messages that fuel this obsession.